American Incarceration Research Articles

Disrupting the Reproductive Lives of Japanese American Families During Wartime: The Overlapping Histories of Removal, Incarceration, and Eugenic Sterilization, 1942–1946

The World War II mass incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans disrupted families, enacted intergenerational trauma, and characterized Japanese Americans as inherent racial threats. This federal exercise in biopolitical management intersected with state-sponsored eugenic sterilization in California institutions. Linking War Relocation Authority and California Department of Institutions records, we document 32 Japanese American sterilization survivors during the wartime incarceration period (1942–1946). We show how federal and state authority converged to deprive Japanese Americans of civil rights and reproductive liberty. We add original research and analysis to the intertwined histories of Japanese American incarceration, eugenics, and family in the United States.

The Japanese American incarceration and the origins of penology in California: A microhistory

AbstractThe history of academic criminology has been written at a macro‐scale from national and international perspectives. These histories rely on abstract concepts that overlook external events in the formation of criminology. Using a microhistory approach, this article explores the origins of the penology programme established at the Police School of San José State University. Willard Schmidt started the programme in 1946 based on his experience as director of security police at Tule Lake prison camp, a site for incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. The discussion examines August Vollmer's role in founding the Police School and his opposition to the incarceration, Schmidt's activities at Tule Lake, and how this shaped the first penology programme in California.

Schooling in camp: Incarceration camps and the Japanese American school experience during World War II

AbstractObjectiveThis study aims to explore the school experiences of Japanese American children and teenagers who were incarcerated in camps during World War II following the issuance of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.MethodsThe study examines video interviews available in Densho's online archive, focusing on the educational experiences of second‐generation Japanese Americans who resumed their education in the camps.ResultsThe analysis reveals that many interviewees reported positive experiences in camp schools, despite the poor conditions. A key factor contributing to these positive experiences was the dedication of teachers, who not only promoted academic success but also addressed the psychological and emotional needs of the incarcerated students.ConclusionWhile many interviewees highlighted the supportive role of teachers, the negative effects of incarceration on their school experiences cannot be overlooked, as a significant number recalled unpleasant aspects of their education in the camps. Moreover, the incarceration of Japanese Americans still has contemporary implications.

Demystifying oral history with natural language processing and data analytics: a case study of the Densho digital collection

PurposeThis study aims to explore the applications of natural language processing (NLP) and data analytics in understanding large-scale digital collections in oral history archives.Design/methodology/approachNLP and data analytics were used to analyse the oral interview transcripts of 904 survivors of the Japanese American incarceration camps collected from Densho Digital Repository, relying specifically on descriptive analysis, keyword extraction, topic modelling and sentiment analysis (SA).FindingsThe researchers found multiple geographic areas of large residential communities of ethnic Japanese people and the place names of the concentration camps. The keywords and topics extracted reflect the deplorable conditions and militaristic nature of the camps and the forced labour of the internees. When remembering history, the main focus for the narrators remains the redress and reparation movement to obtain the restitution of their civil rights. SA further found that the forcible removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during Second World War negatively impacted and brought deep trauma to the narrators.Originality/valueThis case study demonstrated how NLP and data analytics could be applied to analyse oral history archives and open avenues for discovery. Archival researchers and the general public may benefit from this type of analysis in making connections between temporal, spatial and emotional elements, which will contribute to a holistic understanding of individuals and communities in terms of their collective memory.

George Takei’s Allegiance: WWII Japanese American incarceration as a cautionary tale

ABSTRACT The musical Allegiance was inspired by the childhood of actor-activist George Takei, a Japanese American whose family was incarcerated by the United States government in ‘war relocation camps’ during World War II. Performed in both New York and London, the play is a rare popular depiction of Japanese detention – a chapter of American history that is simultaneously present and hidden in U.S. public imagination. The musical underscores the realities of racial discrimination that rendered Japanese Americans vulnerable to rights abuses and asks whether a citizen must prove one’s loyalty. Thinking through the ‘absent presence’ of Japanese American incarceration by viewing performances such as Allegiance is a vital step for acknowledging the precariousness of American citizenship and for preventing human rights abuses in the future. Today, this play serves as a cautionary tale for the United States as anti-Asian hatred spikes and citizenship stripping among naturalized American citizens increases.

The Implicated Reader: Second-Person Address in Novels of US Imperialism

ABSTRACT: This essay explores how literature can help reckon with past and present political violence by employing formal and rhetorical techniques to implicate readers in such violence. Bringing Michael Rothberg’s concept of “the implicated subject” (2019)—a figure who is neither a victim nor perpetrator but rather enables or benefits from regimes of violence—into conversation with narrative theory and formalist criticism, the essay conceptualizes what I call an implicated reader , a term that designates an implied reader who is implicated in the violent events and structures represented in the given text. In order to develop and demonstrate my theoretical framework of the implicated reader, I analyze three twenty-first-century novels depicting diferent legacies of US imperialism: Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine (2002), representing the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans; Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), portraying post-9/11 racial violence; and Tommy Orange’s There There (2018), depicting legacies of Indigenous genocide and dispossession. I examine how these novels use distinct forms of second-person address—either characterized or uncharacterized , and internal or external —to invite readers to identify with the narratee evoked as an implicated subject. The essay ultimately suggests that rather than facilitating the reader’s identification and empathy with victimized subjects, some works of literature challenge injustice and provoke political responsibility by prompting readers to imagine themselves in the position of someone who contributes to rather than sufers from political violence.

International Law Enforcement Observer XII

Aim: Issue XII of the Observer covers topics that could have a significant impact on both public safety strategy and the future development of criminal justice policy. There is no doubt that the strengthening of constitutional values and the need to make the functioning of state power more effective are new challenges for law enforcement. The following reviews report on research from abroad that can serve the development of policing, law enforcement and criminal justice.Methodology: In addition to the traditional jurisprudential methodology, the literature increasingly draws on political science disciplines with a global perspective. A good example is Tamás Suszter’s paper, which gives us a picture of how the situation of NGOs in some countries has been assessed in recent times. Róbert Berei also reports on ground-breaking research in his report on the organisational culture of the Metropolitan Police Service in London in 2023. BernadettBacsó’s analysis is not far behind, confronting the reader with the lessons of the so-called German police family model. Typical criminological reactions are highlighted by Barbara Mágó when she notes that ‘the majority of narratives on human trafficking focus on criminals exploiting vulnerable victims’.Findings: One of the findings of the study analysing the situation of NGOs is that, ‘It is important to note, however, that although the laws against NGOs do not appear to be a cause of wider human rights repression in the period under review, this does not mean that they do not have a deterrent effect on the functioning of NGOs.’ A new feature in the criminological analysis of trafficking is the analysis from the perspectives of consent, coercion and fraud, which ‘... provides a somewhat more nuanced view of the rigid legal definition, and empirical studies present a less hostile picture of trafficking. The approach of the study can thus be considered as a niche one.’ Róbert Bogotyán cites a US example from the field of penitentiary law when he states, ‘The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw a dramatic jump in parole revocations: both new offenses and parole violations were now sufficient to contribute to the increase in American incarceration.’Value: Despite the diversity of the reviews in the fields of constitutionalism, public security, law enforcement, criminal justice and prison culture, they are united in their defence of human values. From civilian control to the reintegration of those serving their sentences, the common theme is the effective and humane service of public order and public safety.

Hisaye Yamamoto’s Silence-Voice Interplay in Japanese American Imprisonment Camps

Abstract Within times of war and U.S.-state-imposed guilt, Japanese American female characters in “The Legends of Miss Sasagawara” experience repeated status changes throughout World War II and the Japanese American imprisonment camps. The tense conflictual relations between U.S. authorities and the Nikkei (Japanese diaspora in the United States) echo within the intra-Nikkei communities held in camps: branded as enemies by the state, Nikkei individuals re-segregate within camps, leading to a fractured communication and tribalist attitudes. The present paper investigates the silence-voice interplay of female characters in confinement narratives, as depicted by Hisaye Yamamoto in her literary rendering of the Japanese American imprisonment camps phenomenon. The historical context of the 1940s ruptures the communication inside the Nikkei community, especially concerning the female character Miss Mari Sasagawara, leading to misunderstandings, tribalism, and (self-)isolation.

Confronting historical narratives at the Castillo de San Marcos, Saint Augustine, Florida

Recent research on intangible cultural heritage and the politics of contested sites of memory show that the emotional dimensions of historic places change over time and influence what visitors experience. These dimensions also influence interpretive strategies and historical narratives within sites that are public tourist destinations. In this regard, the Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine, Florida posits significant challenges. As a national monument situated in a scenic, sea-side town, it is a symbol of Spanish Florida and part of the National Park Service (NPS). Conveyed as the place where ‘America begins,’ the lesser-known history is that, when operated under the United States military as Fort Marion (1825–1924), it was the site of three periods of Native American incarceration and the foundation of an educational system for forced assimilation. Within this context, this essay focuses on three questions: How does a governmental entity such as the NPS present complicated histories experienced at tourism sites? In what ways can the Castillo become a place that goes beyond Native American existence or disappearance to present complex narratives of survival and active resistance? And, to what extent can tourism sites become agents of change to confront settler colonialism through centering new voices? Through the concept of survivance and centering Indigenous perspectives and voices, national parks can broaden interpretations and create more complex narratives of history.

Labor markets and incarceration: The China shock to American punishment

AbstractStudies have failed to show a positive effect of unemployment on incarceration despite reasons to expect such a relationship. We note that prior estimates have been muddied by the absence of substate data, a focus on prisons rather than on jails, limited measures of unemployment, and the fact that the health of the labor market is endogenous to incarceration. We instrument for local exposure to the rise of Chinese exports (“the China Shock”) to estimate the effect of job loss on American incarceration. Marshaling a new data set of prisoners and jail inmates by race at the commuting zone level, we show that negative shocks to local labor markets led to significant increases in total incarceration rates for both Blacks and Whites. The effect seems to be driven by increased prison rather than jail populations. This estimate is invisible to ordinary least squares, which may help explain null results reported by past work. Counterfactual exercises suggest that the effect of job loss was punitively consequential. Had employment gains from the 1990s been preserved into the 2000s, the U.S. incarceration rate would have grown significantly less than it did.

Cripping the Archive: Analyzing Archival Disorder in the Yamashita Family Archives and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Letters to Memory

This article outlines a crip archival analysis of Karen Tei Yamashita’s creative family memoir Letters to Memory (2017) and the separate Yamashita Family Archives; the analysis revolves around the concept of disorder. The book and digital archives move the daily lived experience of incarceration out of chronological order, encouraging new connections across a massive collection of materials: letters, photographs, federal surveillance documents, paintings, sermons, and other ephemera surrounding World War II Japanese American incarceration. Their respective acts of assembling and retelling destabilize the dominant narrative of a resolved family or national trauma to reflect divergent embodied experiences of distress and disability effected by racial debilitation. Offering concentric analysis of textual and archival reordering via Asian American studies, disability studies, and digital humanities, this article adds alternative dimensions to the ongoing legacy of incarceration by inviting readers to create new constellations of meaning through examining temporal and embodied disorder. Reading the physical book and digital archives together also acts as a model for how literary studies scholars might complicate our attention to embodiment beyond narrative analysis, by thinking about disability and madness in the design and structure of texts and digital media. Through cripping the archive, the author calls for a reconceptualization of mad and disabled bodyminds as not only content to be examined, but also users and creators whose disorder animates alternative ways of knowing personal and state violence.

Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II

Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II

“Nothing but My Own Whole Body”: Revisiting Radical Haiku Through Violet Kazue de Cristoforo’s Life and Work

ABSTRACT This essay reflects upon the continuing significance of the freestyle Kaiko haiku movement documented by poet, editor, and translator Violet Kazue de Cristoforo in the anthology May Sky: There Is Always Tomorrow (1997). A vivid, rule-breaking, highly social form that thrived in specialized clubs, Kaiko haiku began in Tokyo in the early 1900s and was brought by young emigrant writers to California, where it was transformed and almost erased by Japanese American incarceration. The essay revisits the poetic form and de Cristoforo’s literary work and activism in light of settler-colonialism, ecological change, and the essayist’s experience living in California’s Central Valley.

Hard History: Teaching the Japanese American Experience in American Concentration Camps

How should “hard history” be confronted to understand the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II? This article shares a way of teaching this topic that not only confronts directly the real experiences of Japanese Americans in concentration camps but also humanizes the story. Encouraging students to learn the history experientially, the author uses two different sets of historical primary sources, offering both an “outsider” and “insider” perspective. First, the author explains that he focuses on the biographies and objectives of different photographers who took photos at Manzanar, highlighting how this context helps illuminate students’ perceptions and understanding of these photographs, revealing a larger story about the experience of Japanese Americans. Second, he describes how he incorporates the diary of Stanley Hayami, a Japanese American teenager interned at Heart Mountain who used his diary to retain agency within an oppressive system. Through an analysis of the diary with students, the author demonstrates how this diary captures the complexity of the Japanese American experience in American concentration camps.

Back to the Future: Time Traveling to 1942

Abstract Japanese new media artist Masaki Fujihata's exhibition and groundbreaking accompanying public augmented reality (AR) installation “BeHere/1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration” remind us that even after eighty years, the ghost life of World War II Japanese American internment continues to haunt us. “BeHere/1942” revisits the War Relocation Authority's photographic history of the Japanese American incarceration experience using digital technology, including AR, which allows contemporary spectators to immerse themselves in the events of “relocation day” in the spring of 1942. Fujihata provides a new way of seeing, remembering, and experiencing photographs of the Japanese American wartime past in the present—empowered with contemporary media tools that are distinctly from what he calls “our own time”: AR.

Social networks and community features: Identifying neighborhoods in a WWII Japanese American incarceration center

Socially defined neighborhoods develop through frequent face to face interactions among residents and their self-identification as neighbors. While archaeological evidence of neighborhoods is usually dependent on artifact frequencies, boundaries, or shared features, this paper explores how effectively communal features act as proxies for social interactions. Network data drawn from historic newspapers published by incarcerees at Amache, a WWII Japanese American Incarceration Center, is used to recreate networks of interaction between residents of a block – a spatial unit generally viewed as a neighborhood, that housed between 200 and 350 individuals. Within a sample of surveyed residential areas, these interpersonal networks of published social events are compared to the frequency of community landscape features to see how well archaeological remains correspond to historic network data in identifying socially defined neighborhoods archaeologically. All blocks exhibit neighborhood-like social interaction within one or the other dataset, but not always in both suggesting that archaeological research should test multiple datasets to make more robust interpretations about neighborhoods in the past.

Origami activism, inalienable collections, and crumbling concrete: Material engagements with Histories of violence

AbstractThe World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was a traumatic event that had lasting repercussions on multiple communities. Archaeologists have sought to productively pursue community‐based methodologies in studying this period, employing object‐based oral histories, outreach events, and community participation in fieldwork. However, less scholarly attention has looked to the ways in which materials have become central to understanding and mobilizing around the incarceration camp history. Acts of pilgrimage, memorialization, scholarly study, and activism constitute key arenas through which this heritage is participated with, each interacting with materials in different ways. This article discusses three cases of material engagements, from the politics of object ownership to origami activism and their importance in reckoning with this violent past. Materials in these cases are not passive objects but rather spur actions and create new publics. Furthermore, the physical qualities of materials shape both the ways in which they are engaged and the politics that surround their rhetorical deployment.

Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History

Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History

Reimagining Trauma: Japanese American Incarceration Reflected in Kenji by Mike Shinoda

Trauma inherited by forbearers from those who had suffered racial injustice can endure so much consequence for later generations. Similarly, what had been affected to intergenerational Jews around the world about the Holocaust was, to an extent, repeated by Japanese Americans who had experienced incarceration during the World War II. This tragedy was recorded and reflected in several art and literary works including photography, short stories, and music. Interestingly, these eerie memories transmitted by the postgeneration or referred as ‘witness’ instead of ‘testifier’ (survivor) can be thoroughly seen present and well understood in such works. One of which is a song written by an American musician, Mike Shinoda, entitled Kenji. Therefore, this paper aims at figuring out on how this traumatic experience inhabited by the person who seemed to own the memories coming from someone else. Later in this study, the problem will be approached with postmemory by Frosh gradually by investigating constructive process in the lyrics of Kenji. In order to enhance discussion on this issue, the details of each line will be further analyzed with the concept of postmemory including memory, transmission and constructive process. As a result, the findings indicate that transmission of the trauma is reimagined through ‘actively’ constructive process by the songwriter as the ‘witness’ of the Japanese American incarceration. Rather than picturing the memory in similar context, the witness employs testimony in his creative reinvention to offer ‘new context’ in working through the trauma.

Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, Their Arabic Letters, & an American President by Jeffrey Einboden

Reviewed by: Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, Their Arabic Letters, & an American President by Jeffrey Einboden Kambiz GhaneaBassiri (bio) Islam, Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, North Africa Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, Their Arabic Letters, & an American President. By Jeffrey Einboden. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 352. Cloth, $29.95.) Did Thomas Jefferson have knowledge of the presence of Muslims in the territories over which he presided? Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives is an admirable attempt to decisively answer this question with a "Yes." While digging in various archives for Arabic writings from antebellum America, Einboden discovered two Arabic manuscripts that had been written by "runaway" slaves detained in rural Kentucky. A "frontier pioneer" named Ira P. Nash carried the manuscripts to Washington and handed them to the president on October 4, 1804. Based on his communications with Nash, Jefferson thought that these manuscripts "'contained' the Africans' own 'history, as stated by themselves'" (178). He thus sought to have them translated so that "if practicable," he "may procure the release of the men if proper" (156). Unfortunately, the specialists who were consulted on Jefferson's behalf were not able to decipher the Arabic writings in these manuscripts. Einboden reads one of them as Surat al-Nas, the last chapter of the Qur'an, and the other he identifies as illegible but likely to contain "verses from [End Page 184] discrete chapters of the Qur'an" (305, n13). He argues that their exact content is not as significant as their context. They "represent intentional acts of authorship, embodying a deep 'history,' while also seeming to articulate anxieties particular to . . . their [authors'] present enslavement" (178). Much of Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives aims to narrate this deep history of Jefferson and other American elites' interactions with Islam by tethering their biographies to the unpublished Arabic writings that Einboden discovered in the course of his years of research. This resulting story is significant for Einboden because it challenges the widespread assumption that the presence of enslaved Muslim Africans was invisible to the Founders. The question that Einboden sets out to answer, "How could these two pages—authored in Arabic by fugitive West Africans—have stayed submerged for more than two centuries?" (6), is all the more perplexing given that nearly every week of Jefferson's political life has been documented and analyzed. By bringing Jefferson's biography into conversation with contemporary Arabic writings, Einboden hopes to expand the canon of early American history and to integrate Muslims into how we imagine the political formation of the United States today. While I wholeheartedly applaud Einboden's aim, Jefferson's Fugitive Muslims falls short of realizing it in a compelling way. It is overwritten and under-theorized. For example, in a chapter discussing the signing of a treaty between Morocco and the United States, Einboden writes, Instead of December 1786, Jefferson waited until January 1, 1787, to trace his signature on the treaty. Mirroring the Ramadan autograph of Morocco's emperor—who had ratified the treaty on the first day of Islam's holiest month—Jefferson signaled his own approval on New Year's Day. Not a season of fasting in Paris, but a feast (32). One wishes that rather than resorting to such rhetorical associations between Jefferson and the Arabic documents he encountered, Einboden would have spent more time exploring the theoretical and historical ramifications of translating such emerging political concepts as "Citizens of the United States" into Arabic. What does this written exchange tell us about how citizenship in a nation–state was understood by Americans and Moroccans at this time, and how was it projected to shape international and diplomatic relations? Elsewhere, while discussing Jefferson's efforts to have the abovementioned manuscripts translated, Einboden writes, [End Page 185] Twenty-two years before, in 1785, O'Brien had petitioned Jefferson's help to save him from Muslim imprisonment [in North Africa]; now in 1807, Jefferson was petitioning O'Brien to help save two Muslims from American incarceration [by translating their Arabic writings]. In 1785, Jefferson had advised O'Brien to keep quiet and discreet in Muslim lands; now, Jefferson was asking O'Brien to divulge...